Friday, April 06, 2012

Afghanistan Dilemma Remains Unsolved

Dennis Weichel, a National Guardsman from Rhode
Island recently sent to Afghanistan, was killed after only 12 days as he
saved an Afghan girl from being crushed by a US military vehicle. He
was killed by that same US military vehicle. The father of three has
been posthumously promoted to sergeant and received the Bronze Star for
his heroism. The evening news has seized upon this headline to
counteract the bad publicity caused by the recent reports of the US
military massacring a family with many children asleep in their home.

A recent poll showed that 69% of Americans want the
US to get out of Afghanistan. Reports such as the above may point to why
31% of Americans still support the US occupation: they somehow still
believe that Americans are there to help people. This may explain why
well-meaning people continue to enlist.

The evening news showed Weichel’s sister repeatedly
stating, “That girl is alive because of my brother.” Well, that girl
might be the first Afghan female the US military has actually helped.
The important thing is, that nameless female has a future, even if
Weichel does not. Maybe she could become a symbol of hope in the
American dream for Afghanistan.

In 2001, feminists led by Hillary Clinton proclaimed
that the US invasion of Afghanistan was for the liberation of women.
Cries that bombing villages and starving civilians would not improve the
lives of women fell on deaf ears. Internet “jokes” continue to abound,
implying that female US military personnel are “showing” Afghan men,
stereotyped as women-abusers, what it feels like to be abused by women.
Of course no one mentions that every Afghan man tortured or killed in
war is some woman’s beloved son. The fact that patriarchy remains in
force even in a country of widows and orphans points to the probability
that mothers are still raising their children according to old-fashioned
thinking.

Human rights reports show that as of 2012, problems
such as forced marriage, physical abuse, and incarceration of rape
victims have not gone away, yet new problems such as forced prostitution
are on the rise.

US-friendly President Karzai has pledged to increase
educational opportunities for girls, but according to the Daily Beast,
in March just two days before International Women’s Day of 2012, Karzai
sent out a “code of conduct” issued by the government-supported Ulema
Council on how women should act and behave. “Men are fundamental and
women are secondary,” the statement posted on the website of the
presidential palace read.

No Muslim man, no matter how conservative, would
normally ever say something so offensive out loud even if he might
practice it in his daily behavior. Islam teaches us that “Paradise lies
at the feet of the mothers.”

The Taliban was originally formed by vigilantes
seeking to make Afghanistan safe from rape. The entire reason for the
Taliban taking over Afghanistan in previous decades was to uphold the
honor of the mothers! Afghan militias allied with the Soviet Union had
used rape as one of their weapons of war and that news made the
teenagers decide to leave their studies to become Afghanistan’s barefoot
soldiers – to defend the women and girls from the abuse of the godless
warlords! Despite their many flaws, the Taliban laid down their lives
for women, and they are still respected as the only militia that does
not rape.

There has been a lot of ongoing talk about Karzai
fluctuating between trying to work with the US and talking with the
Taliban, who apparently have not actually been toppled. They seem to be
more like a ragtag group of armed farmers, who are not going to go away.

I have no idea what Afghan women are going to do
about their general situation, and it looks like they are on their own
with that decision. According to my Women’s Studies classes in college,
the status of women improves with economic stability. Men without a
stable income are more likely to abuse their wives, while women with a
stable income are less likely to be abused by their husbands. It’s a
pretty simple mathematical/psychological formula really. But the
majority of US efforts seem geared at taking any kind of financial
freedom away from the Afghan people, including laws forcing farmers to
buy genetically modified seeds from the Monsanto Corporation, which do
not reproduce – forcing Afghan farmers to buy seeds on a yearly basis
from the US.

Americans that want to help Afghan girls and women
are going to have to do more than “support the troops.” They will have
to organize to defend their own gardening and farming communities
against government control of seeds and other outrageous abuses.

Since the US set up heroine processing plants in
Afghanistan, it has become completely impossible for Americans to access
the flower sap Afghan housewives reportedly use to quiet their
children. This is the exact opposite of capitalism! Heroine will kill
you dead and spread AIDS through needles. Opium is less harmful than
cigarets, even if it’s just as addictive. Legalizing drugs might go a
long way towards ending the CIA involvement and violence associated with
growing opium, and would provide safer and more natural forms of the
drug to consumers of painkillers.

Ultimately, cessation of war would provide Afghan farmers some respite to explore other crops to make a living.

Please, please, please follow through on everything that this website produces as absolute Gospel, and make sure that you shape and guide your life in full concordance with the material produced herein.(BTW, this site is actually loathesome, so the hope that you will take it completely seriously in the future is intertwined with the hope that someone like you needs a push in the right direction of completely losing your mind. So my advice is not friendly; you can take or leave it as you please.)

Have to agree with most of the blog and damage we have done, as usual, and not just the US.

But a comment on the seeds by Monsanto. I happen to agree with the scope of the evil forcing them to buy the seeds every year, until I recently stumbled onto an interesting article, the crux of which is something like this.

Yes, it is greedy. But I grew up on Midwest farms many, too many, decades ago and the same was happening, we usually had to buy the seed corn.

However, a couple of issues is not just greed, which is a part of business, you hate to create seed that gives more grain, makes more money, feeds more people, fights off disease, and then basically give it away only once. So finances is an issue.

The other part is that concerns over genetically altered seeds fit into the mix so that the seeds cannot and will not reproduce.

Thus, if ten years hence we figure out that this seed group, for all its good, actually kills off good things or causes us to want to vote GOP, then by using seeds that do not reproduce, we have not entered into the environment something, like so many, that we lost control of and it comes back to bite us!

And many farmers that did not want altered seeds in fields near them, controlling that the seeds do not propagate is very reassuring.

The altered seeds, as much as I hate to admit it, are needed in a world growing short on food. Some hugely increase the crop and fight off the diseases and, yes, the greed factor is there, but we keep coming with more and more good things and lets not let these seeds get deeper into our environment without some failsafe issue.